Hitherto, various antennae have been provided for a variety of applications, for example fixed (e.g. communication base stations), movable (e.g. on cars, airplanes or ships) or portable applications on the sending and/or receiving side. In many practical cases, hybrid applications emerge, e.g. when a fixed base station transmits and/or receives signals to and/or from a portable device.
For the purpose of the present invention to be described herein below, it should be noted that
an antenna may be any device, unit or means capable of sending, receiving and/or transceiving polarized and/or unpolarized electromagnetic waves of any frequency or frequency range, or any spectrum, by means of any suitable technology e.g. based on electromagnetic induction; the antenna may be of any suitable structure, e.g. parabolic, planar, or array-like, and may use any suitable technology for detecting and/or dispatching electromagnetic waves;
a degree of freedom (DOF) refers to any rotary and/or translatory movement axis in a three-dimensional space; although in the following an example is given of an antenna system with an antenna having 3 rotary DOFs for descriptive purposes, the present invention is not restricted thereto; any antenna having at least one DOF being rotary or translatory may be employed;
method steps likely to be implemented as software code portions and being run using a processor are software code independent and can be specified using any known or future developed programming language as long as the functionality defined by the method steps is preserved;
generally, any method step is suitable to be implemented as software or by hardware without changing the idea of the present invention in terms of the functionality implemented;
method steps and/or devices, units or means likely to be implemented as hardware components at an antenna system are hardware independent and can be implemented using any known or future developed hardware technology or any hybrids of these, such as MOS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor), CMOS (Complementary MOS), BiMOS (Bipolar MOS), BiCMOS (Bipolar CMOS), ECL (Emitter Coupled Logic), TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic), etc., using for example ASIC (Application Specific IC (Integrated Circuit)) components, FPGA (Field-programmable Gate Arrays) components, CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Device) components or DSP (Digital Signal Processor) components;
devices, units or means (e.g. antennae) can be implemented as individual devices, units or means, but this does not exclude that they are implemented in a distributed fashion throughout an environment, as long as the functionality of the device, unit or means is preserved.
Recently, various approaches have been proposed for controlling drivable antennae for mobile applications, e.g. for establishing an Uplink/Downlink connection to the communication satellite.
In consideration of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide an accordingly improved antenna system drivable in at least one degree of freedom, and a method and a computer program for the antenna system.
According to the present invention, in a first aspect, this object is for example achieved by an antenna system comprising:
a target value provider configured to provide at least one target value;
a data-bus configured to relay the at least one target value;
at least one sensor unit configured to provide a current position in the at least one degree of freedom via the data-bus to the target value provider, and
at least one antenna drive unit configured to drive the drivable antenna in the at least one degree of freedom according to the at least one target value.
According to advantageous further refinements of the invention as defined under the above first aspect,
the data-bus is constituted by a Controller Area Network bus;
the at least one antenna drive unit is constituted by a data-bus based motor system, including:
a transceiver configured to receive the target value relayed by the data-bus;
a positioning sensor configured to detect a current motor state based on one of the at least one degree of freedom; and
a motor configured to drive the antenna system in the one of the at least one degree of freedom according to the target value received by the transceiver and the current motor state detected by the positioning sensor:
the data-bus is configured to broadcast the at least one target value; and
the transceiver is configured to decide a relevance of the target value based on the at least one degree of freedom;
the antenna system further comprises:
a data-bus based inclination sensor for detecting current states of both a pitch degree of freedom and a roll degree of freedom and broadcasting the current states via the data-bus, and
the target value provider is configured to calculate a target value of a first degree of freedom,
a first one of the at least one antenna drive unit is configured to drive the antenna system in the first degree of freedom according to the current motor state detected by the positioning sensor and the calculated target value of the first degree of freedom, and
a second or further one of the at least one antenna drive unit is configured to drive the antenna system in a second or further degree of freedom according to a second or further one of the at least one target value received by the transceiver and the current motor state detected by the positioning sensor.
According to the present invention, in a second aspect, this object is for example achieved by a method comprising:
providing at least one target value;
data-bus based relaying the at least one target value; and
driving the drivable antenna in the at least one degree of freedom according to the at least one target value.
According to advantageous further refinements of the invention as defined under the above second aspect,
the data-bus based relaying comprises:
broadcasting the at least one target value via the data-bus; and
deciding a relevance of the target value based on the at least one degree of freedom.
According to the present invention, in a third aspect, this object is for example achieved by a computer program comprising:
providing at least one target value;
data-bus based relaying the at least one target value; and
driving the drivable antenna in the at least one degree of freedom according to the at least one target value.
According to the present invention, in a fourth aspect, this object is for example achieved by an antenna system comprising:
means for providing at least one target value;
means for data-bus based relaying the at least one target value;
means for providing a current position in the at least one degree of freedom via the means for data-bus based relaying to the means for providing the at least one target value, and
means for driving the drivable antenna in the at least one degree of freedom according to the at least one target value.
In this connection, it has to be pointed out that advantageously the present invention enables:
A simple and easy-to-use structure, since no converters and/or antenna control units are required.
A compact structure, since the data-bus requires less wiring.
An inexpensive implementation, since any converters and/or antenna control units can be omitted, and no high quality wiring for analogue signal transmission is required.
An efficient manner of communication between the target value provider and the sensors as well as the motors of the antenna system is provided.